MAN OF THE YEAR AWARD: Mr. Tony O. Elumelu, Chairman, Heirs Holdings and UBA PLC, bags Nigerian NewsDirect’s “Man Of The Year” award
By People’s Voice Nigeria | News
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The selection of Mr. Tony O. Elumelu, Chairman, Heirs Holdings and UBA PLC, is in recognition of his purposeful leadership, the empowerment of over 15,847 young African entrepreneurs, the support of 1.2 million people through the Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF) Connect, and all-inclusive, participatory governance and programs, as demonstrated in the successful running of the United Bank of Africa Group (UBA) during the year.
Considering the impact he made in addressing unemployment challenges directly and indirectly, at a time of high and rapidly rising youth unemployment in Nigeria, Africa, and the Middle East, this makes him the winner of NewsDirect’s “Man of the Year” award.
The event, which took place in Lagos in honour of the 12th year anniversary of Nigerian NewsDirect Newspaper on Friday, had the theme, “Good Governance: Private and Public Sectors’ Roles in Rising Revenue, Growth, Development, and a Positive Turnaround of the Nigerian Economy.”
Tony Elumelu is a Nigerian entrepreneur and investor. He came into the limelight all of a sudden in 1997, when he oversaw a small group of investors to take over a small, floundering commercial bank in Lagos. He turned it profitable within a few years, and in 2005 he merged it with the United Bank for Africa. That banking group now has subsidiaries in 20 African countries and in the U.S. and U.K. UBA provides corporate, commercial, SME, and consumer banking services to more than 21 million customers globally.
He also chairs Nigeria’s largest quoted conglomerate, Transcorp Plc, whose subsidiaries include Transcorp Power, one of the largest generators of electricity in Nigeria, and Transcorp Hotels Plc, Nigeria’s foremost hospitality brand. He is the Founder and Chairman of Trans-Niger Oil & Gas Limited (TNOG), an upstream oil and gas company that owns and operates Nigeria’s OML17 (with 2P reserves of 1.3 billion barrels of oil equivalent) and is committed to creating resource-based added value on the African continent.
Tony is the most prominent champion of entrepreneurship in Africa. In 2010, he created the Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF), a pan-African philanthropy empowering a new generation of African entrepreneurs, catalyzing economic growth, driving poverty eradication, and ensuring job creation across all 54 African countries. Since inception, the Foundation has funded just under 10,000 entrepreneurs and created a digital ecosystem of over one million Africans as part of its ten-year, US$100 million commitment through its flagship Entrepreneurship Program.
Self-funded, the Foundation is increasingly sharing its unique ability to identify, train, mentor, and fund young entrepreneurs across Africa with institutions such as the United Nations Development Programme, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and other global elopement agencies. His businesses and foundation are inspired by Tony’s economic philosophy of “Africapitalism,” which positions the private sector and, most importantly, entrepreneurs as the catalysts for the social and economic development of the African continent. Tony sits on a number of public and social sector boards, including the World Economic Forum Community of Chairmen and the Global Board of UNICEF’s Generation Unlimited. He was named one of the “2020 Most Influential People in the World,” recognized for his business leadership and economic empowerment of young Africans.
Tony Elumelu was represented by Mr. Ramon Nasir, Head of Media Relations.
